We are the champions.

I know you're all waiting with bated breath to hear how the school's faculty/staff bowling tournament on Friday turned out.

They had two forms of competition: best total pins and best ball (in which the best score per frame was used as the team's score). My team (which included Froggy and two other men from facilities) was placed in Division I (which means we are more experienced bowlers than, "Gee, I haven't bowled since this tournament last year."). We won the Best Ball certificate and $60, which conveniently split four ways (and which pays for my cheesesteaks the next two weeks). The rules stated that no team could win both awards in their division, so the best total pins team was the one which included the bowling coach. (Or, maybe, that team wasn't allowed to win both, so we got one, but I prefer the former viewpoint, as it makes me feel better.)

I didn't bowl as well on Friday (153, 125, 159) as I had on Wednesday, during my league play, although I was about 20 pins above average for two of the games. My team mates said they weren't doing as well as they normally do. One of my team mates has bowled 300 games more than once, and he didn't break 200 this time. In fact, my score was the highest (within our team) in the third game.

The lanes themselves are partly at fault. This wasn't the same alley as my weekly league plays on, and I couldn't figure out at all how the wood or the pins would respond. (It made me feel better when the bowling coach, whose games are at the same alley as mine, told me he couldn't figure out these lanes, either.) In one frame, I knocked down seven pins. When I picked up my ball from the return and got into my stance, there were no pins standing. (We decided as a team to accept it as a spare, considering all the other times pins didn't fall as we expected them to.)

I'll have to practice bowl at this alley a few times in the coming year and see if I can figure out the tricks. Froggy said the lanes are better in Hixson, so I'll have to try out that alley, too.